Scary Shit

I used to like horror movies. I liked horror movies before I ever saw my first horror movie.

I lied again. I guess Ghostbusters is a horror movie. It was my first horror movie. That ghost librarian's face popping out was pretty scary.

Ghostbusters was probably the only horror movie that I saw for many years. This is because is was rated PG. My parents wouldn't let me see R rated movies. They wouldn't even let me see PG-13. They would tell me that I needed to be thirteen. I think they changed their minds when I was around twelve.

While all of my friends in elementary school were watching R rated movies, I had to settle for family-friendly PG stuff. I remember my friend telling me in fourth grade that his cool dad had let him see David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly. This made me very jealous.

My parents let me read awful novelizations of R rated movies, so this is what I did.

I really wanted to rent Nightmare on Elm Street. I overheard the kids on the bus to summer camp talking about it. They made it sound cool. My parents wouldn't let me watch it.

I have a memory of reading the novelization of it. I'm not sure if there actually was a novelization of it. I think this may have been a false memory that I created myself because I wanted to see the movie so badly.

My first R rated movie was Police Academy, the first one. I was very happy about it. I had tears in my eyes during the opening credits. I think I was in fifth grade. It felt like a triumph. I believe it was a long time until my parents let me see another R rated movie. I think I really liked the Police Academy series and most of them were rated PG. I must have whined a lot until my parents had enough of me and rented the video.

It wasn't very different than the other Police Academy sequels, except the characters were actually training in a police academy instead of being genuine cops and it showed some tits.

I guess the tits were the reason for the R rating.

But I had already seen tits in some PG movies like Airplane.

I believe that the rating board was pretty fucked at the time. They probably took bribes. Directors of feel good comedies with a few bare breasts and fuck you's gave them briefcases of hundred dollar bills. The ratings board became very rich. Their lives became NC-17 before NC-17 was an actual rating. They blew their hundred dollar bills on hookers and cocaine. They used hundred dollar bills to snort the cocaine, then unrolled the hundred dollar bills and bought more hookers and cocaine with it. They probably disliked horror movies as much as I do now.

There is nothing more boring than a slasher film. It is just the same movie over and over again. Violence is not entertaining. It stopped being entertaining around the time that The Motion Picture Association of America permitted me to see a R rated movie in movie theater without being accompanied by an adult. Violence is pretty depressing, actually.

Except when it's imaginative, like in The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, which I like a lot. It is the only decent horror movie franchise.

If film companies had any sense, horror movies would not exist in our reality.

I believe that teenagers and children are their main audience, the only people who these movies still appeal to. And The Motion Picture Association of America does not allow them to watch these movies, at least without the accompaniment of an adult.

If we were living in an alternative dimension, the existence of horror movies would make sense.

I guess the Hollywood executives finally got a clue with this whole PG-13 horror movie fad. At first I thought it was idiotic. The idea of a PG-13 horror movie is idiotic. But now I've changed my mind. It makes sense. The concept does not tear down the walls of our reality. The doomsday scenario that has been building up ever since the release of the first Halloween movie has been averted. We can all sigh in relief. We should all sigh in relief. We will all live to see the wrinkles of senior citizenship. Unless we are killed earlier by one of the infinite things that can kill us before we're slain by old age.

Thank you Hollywood producers. Earth #200043435345 owes you a debt of gratitude.

I once took a class in horror movies in college. I liked it a lot. It taught me how to write comic book scripts. I believe it also may have contributed to my dislike of horror movies, which I continue to watch and by disappointed by.

I do not know why I continue to watch them.

I like the metafictional stuff that makes me feel clever. I also can't usually guess the entire plot before the series of dull expository/character-building scenes at the beginning. Movies like the first Scream, Funny Games, and the first half of Beyond the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (before it becomes like every other slasher movie in existence).

And I don't really like the Japanese/Korean stuff too. The Japanese stuff is too slow and the Korean stuff is too nonsensical, although they are much better than the awful American remakes. Like pretty much everybody who I have ever met, I like Takashi Miike, at least when his movies aren't bad, which is sixty percent of the time.

I liked 1408, with John Cusack, though. The supernatural is always better than the predictable slasher. Maybe horror movies would be better if someone built a machine that inserted John Cusack into the role of the final girl or the slashitty-slasher in every movie that has ever been filmed. Life would be more enjoyable.

I demand that Takashi Miike film the next installment of the Nightmare on Elm Street series. It will star John Cusack as Freddy Krueger. It will star John Cusack as the final girl. It will be rated R. It will destroy all of reality. It will be worth it.